Fairy Magic brought to the App Store by Belfast company

Inlifesize, the games company established by former Electronic Arts Creative Director, Phil Campbell, and Industrial Light & Magic and Walt Disney Feature Animation alumni Greg Maguire, has today unveiled the company’s first title.

Fairy Magic is a stunning “augmented reality” game which leverages the co-founders extensive experience in game design, visual effects and animation, bringing to mobile a quality of characterization, interaction and technology that is usually the preserve of console games and film effects. Fairy Magic enables the player to use their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad as a lens through which fairies hidden in the world can be found. Players can collect over 50 unique fairies across 7 different “fairy clans”, discover their names, and play simple games with them. Fairies can be photographed indoors or outdoors, with the game lighting adapting to the surroundings.

CEO Greg Maguire said “Phil and I have both been fascinated by the changes in the consumer entertainment landscape brought about by the iPhone, and disappointed that so many independent apps trade off quality against “speed to market” and production costs. We thought we could apply what we know from blockbuster movies and games to the app market and raise the bar for interaction, animation and character design.” Phil Campbell added - “We were fascinated by the Cottingley Fairy hoax, which was in some ways one of the very first examples of a kind of “enhanced reality”, albeit an analog one. With Fairy Magic we’re trying to recreate that sense of fascination and suspension of disbelief, but for a digital audience.”

Campbell and Maguire founded Inlifesize to create applications using game design expertise, proven social mechanics, and emergent mobile technologies - and develop an evolution in entertainingly meaningful experiences for people who want to interact with their world in a brand new way.

Drawing on a global team which includes talent from former Lucasfilm, Pixar, and Digital Domain artists, developers and animators, Inlifesize have developed a proprietary high performance Animation and Augmented Reality platform.

Fairy Magic was financed through the Northern Ireland Screen Fund supported by Invest NI and part funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

The game - which will be available on the App Store from today, August 15th - can be previewed here: